Is SEO A Necessity For Small Businesses

SEO has become a controversial topic of discussion for small-scale companies or even individual businesses. While business costs are expensive, companies are torn between creating a separate budget for marketing, most commonly online marketing.

Many companies believe that SEO and online marketing are a waste of time, resources and money, claiming that they offer a small ROI, compared to other forms of marketing. While some say that SEO is overrated, other go even further, suggesting that SEO is “dead”. However, we disagree!

SEO, done correctly, is neither dead, nor overrated. SEO is not only a necessity but instead it is a must for the success of a company or an individual. SEO can definitely make or break small companies, depending on how well you build your SEO campaign.

Before we delve any further into SEO, let’s take a look at what it actually is in a simplified version. Many times, companies often get ‘what is SEO’ wrong and end up not doing justice by it!

What is SEO

SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, is a type of marketing strategy that focuses on increasing the visibility of a website in organic (non-paid) search engine results. In short, it is how effectively can you optimize your website for it show up in Google Searches when the right keywords are searched.

SEO plays an integral part for companies big and small. Actually, SEO is even more important for smaller companies. While big companies are commonly already at “the tip of the tongue” for a lot of customers, smaller companies could do with all the help they can get in order to reach their customers.

SEO can has two sides – technical and creative, a combination of which can help you get the right results. In addition to strategic ads and placements, your website should also be structured in a certain manner to help the users find what they are looking for easily.

There is a common confusion that many companies harbor – that SEO is for businesses. No! SEO is actually for the users and the customers!

SEO ensures that the searchers find what they are looking for in an easy and structured manner. So, the moment you modify your website, or look for the right keywords that describe your website, it isn’t for your self or your website, but rather so your customers can find what they are looking for, which can be you!

Two Different Types of SEO

On-Page SEO: – On-Page SEO refers to any changes that you make on your individual pages to enhance your rankings. These include tasks such as keywords, formatting, page load speed, navigation, on-site blogging, etc.

Off-Page SEO: – Off-Page SEO refers to any tasks that you do off your own website to increase your ranking, such as guest-posts, link building, social media, business profiles, etc.

The best way to achieve success is to find the right mix of On-Page and Off-Page SEO. Focusing on one more than the other might result in either no change in ranking or can even earn you the title of a spammer.

Reasons To Invest in SEO

Here are five reasons why any business or company, no matter how big or small should invest in

Boost User Experience: – SEO rules push you to do your best from the start, which means when you start making your websites you design a website that is not only informative & visually appealing, but is also friendly in terms of being fast loading, including the right keywords, and also making it structured. This allows customers to find what they want, and that too quickly. This commonly results in a returning customer. Since customers are now doing everything online, any website that is not up to the mark, is often skipped. The increase in competition ensures that websites must now focus more on customers rather than profits.

Increase Reach: – SEO is one of the best ways to increase your reach. Look at it this way, someone who focuses only mouth-to-mouth advertising limits their reach to the people in their surrounding network. But with SEO, as you reach higher in search engines, more people who are not just in your network end up stumbling upon your website and discovering it. This allows you to grow tremendously, even with people you may have never heard of before.

Increase Conversions: – SEO also ensures that you end up converting more people to customers. People who search your website are already looking to purchase a product, which means that if you show up on Google’s first page, there is a higher change that you website will definitely be one of the ones that they pick. There are also other ways such as Google Remarketing, which allows you to track your users if they don’t convert and incite them by showing them your website on other web pages to ensure that they you constantly stay on their minds. This results in higher conversion rates.

Build Your Brand: – People often trust Google’s ranking, which means if Tom’s Cafe is number 1 on the search results, while Karen’s Cafe is number 7, they commonly assume that Tom’s Cafe will be better. This is why people trust the search results that often on the first few pages. If you manage to plan your strategy right and end up on the first few pages, then your brand is slowly and steadily become stronger.

Get An Insight To Your Customers: – If your website is properly optimized, it will increase your website’s engine visibility, usability, and credibility, all of which will help you get more traffic to your website. Once your website has a stead stream of traffic, you can use the Google Webmaster to track valuable information about your website users, such as their geographical location, days and times that they are most active, how much time they spend on which page, their interests, etc. All of this can help you understand your customer better, and in turn further modify your products of your websites to increase the traffic and get more customers.

While the naysayers may believe that SEO might be dead or worse useless waste of time and money, we believe that SEO is an important component that should definitely be a part of a company. Any time and money invested in the right type of SEO will definitely get your results. However, sometimes the results take time, so ensure that you have a little patience. While it may not give you quick results, SEO (when done right) will never let you down.

So, even if you have a single person entity, a small enterprise or even a big giant, make some time for building a strategy for SEO and ensure to focus on the right activities, instead of the ones that might give you quick results, but hurt your brand in the long run.

We want you to pitch into this hot debate, what do you believe – is SEO worth the time and effort or should you instead invest is another type of marketing strategy. Pitch in with your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below!

Steve is technical blog writer on Codecondo for SEO Topics. With nearly 5 years of experience in Search engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing, he has worked for many startups and enterprises to bring their website in Google search engine.